The Storytelling Pages of Mehded Maryam Sinclair, illuminating Islamic History and the Oral Traditions for children and the young at heart

While I was in the UK for the MWA Awards Ceremony I managed to book a performance tour alhamdulillah. Thanks to the help of many friends and acquaintance, in two weeks I visited London, Leicester, Liverpoole, Blackburne, Briersfield, Huddersfield, Hounslow, Banbury, Oxford, and Milton Keynes. Mashallah! I loved being among the Muslims in these communities, which I found vibrant and welcoming. Overall I told the story of Musa aleyhisalam to around 1000 children and adults in thirteen performances, in schools, mosque associations, and madrassas. Children aged 4 and up were enthusiastic and generous listeners alhamdulillah, and I sold lots and lots of books and CD’s too.

I am available to do another tour in the late spring, anywhere in the world! One could inquire at maryistanbul@gmail.com

Alhamdulillah the Muslim Writers’ Association short-listed WINGS for an award in its 2011 Unpublished Children’s Work category, and then it was announced as the winner in that category at an awards ceremony at the Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London on 22 November. InshaAllah it will be released by Kube Publishing this year, make dua!! It is in its final stages of editing….sometimes the most painful stages so I’m not kidding when I say make dua!

The Stories-of-Light Website http://maryamsinclair.com/ is finally in its last stages of completion! Alhamdulillah even with no promotion or announcement, the moment the ordering process was put into place, orders for CD’s started coming in. And thanks to CD Baby, the CD as digital downloads are now available through them, though iTunes, and in a short while, inshaAllah, from the Stories-of-Light site too.

My new book, When Wings Expand, is in its final stages of revision now and will be published early next year by Kube Publishing UK. I am fortunate to be working with a brilliant and very patient editor, Yosef Smythe, and fortunate too that my mentors Pattie Gauch and Kim Griswald, with whom I worked in two amazing Highlights Foundation Founders Workshops, have read generous parts of the manuscript and have made their considerable experience and expertise available to me, alhamdulillah.

Here’s an excerpt from When Wings Expand, the journal of a 12-year old Muslim girl living in Toronto:

Monday July 14, 2008

I walked through the house this morning before everyone got up and the silence really scared me. Mehmed woke up next, calling out for Mama. When I went into his room he just turned away from me and stuck his head under the covers. I felt so hurt, especially after last night. I ran back to my room and threw myself onto my settee. My throat was aching and I just started to cry and cry like I would never be able to stop. I didn’t know how to be different, to be strong. It was all just a bunch of words, Buraq. I was remembering the butterfly on the sunflower, and the feeling that Mama was soaring away somewhere, and that I had wings beginning to grow, but none of that was real! It was just all my imagination! Why couldn’t she just have beautiful wings in this life here with me? Why did she need to die?? When I saw the butterfly fly away, I saw my mother and her beauty and her grace flying away from me. I wanted her here with me! I cried harder and harder and harder but I began to see that no amount of crying would change anything, and finally I felt Baba sit on the floor beside the settee. “I’m here, Nur. I love you.” Buraq, it was amazing. He didn’t have to say anything…I just felt the pressure leave me slowly, and I actually started to feel almost like peace come into my heart. Mehmed came in and crawled onto my bed, and we all just stayed there together, me and Mehmed on my bed, Baba on the floor, for a long time.

The waterfall crashes
deafening.
And yet within the roar
There is silence.
This is what
Takes me into itself
And I go, leaving behind the sadness
That roars in me.
Then I remember
What Mama always said to me,Wait. You will see. Allah is cherishing you...

How does Baba know that bringing us to the waterfall is the best possible medicine? Even Mehmed was smiling sometimes by the time we got into the car to come back. In the afternoon Baba took us back to the cemetery. We lay down together on the grass near Mama’s grave and Baba asked Allah to reach into our hearts and heal the wound that her dying is for us.

You can place orders easily by sending a message with your exact order and your complete postal address to maryistanbul@gmail.com. We’ll send you your invoice and you can pay by paypal to the same address.

Eid mubarak!

May these last ten days of Ramadan bring you deep intimacy with Allah and His grace in every aspect of your lives.

The Stories-of-Light Website http://maryamsinclair.com/ is finally in its last stages of completion! Alhamdulillah even with no promotion or announcement, the moment the ordering process was put into place, orders for CD’s started coming in. And thanks to CD Baby, the CD as digital downloads are now available through them, though iTunes, and in a short while, inshaAllah, from the Stories-of-Light site too.

My new book, When Wings Expand, is in its final stages of revision now and will be published early next year by Kube Publishing UK. I am fortunate to be working with a brilliant and very patient editor, Yosef Smythe, and fortunate too that my mentors Pattie Gauch and Kim Griswald, with whom I worked in two amazing Highlights Foundation Founders Workshops, have read generous parts of the manuscript and have made their considerable experience and expertise available to me, alhamdulillah.

Here’s an excerpt from When Wings Expand, the journal of a 12-year old Muslim girl living in Toronto:

Monday July 14, 2008

I walked through the house this morning before everyone got up and the silence really scared me. Mehmed woke up next, calling out for Mama. When I went into his room he just turned away from me and stuck his head under the covers. I felt so hurt, especially after last night. I ran back to my room and threw myself onto my settee. My throat was aching and I just started to cry and cry like I would never be able to stop. I didn’t know how to be different, to be strong. It was all just a bunch of words, Buraq. I was remembering the butterfly on the sunflower, and the feeling that Mama was soaring away somewhere, and that I had wings beginning to grow, but none of that was real! It was just all my imagination! Why couldn’t she just have beautiful wings in this life here with me? Why did she need to die?? When I saw the butterfly fly away, I saw my mother and her beauty and her grace flying away from me. I wanted her here with me! I cried harder and harder and harder but I began to see that no amount of crying would change anything, and finally I felt Baba sit on the floor beside the settee. “I’m here, Nur. I love you.” Buraq, it was amazing. He didn’t have to say anything…I just felt the pressure leave me slowly, and I actually started to feel almost like peace come into my heart. Mehmed came in and crawled onto my bed, and we all just stayed there together, me and Mehmed on my bed, Baba on the floor, for a long time.

The waterfall crashes
deafening.
And yet within the roar
There is silence.
This is what
Takes me into itself
And I go, leaving behind the sadness
That roars in me.
Then I remember
What Mama always said to me,Wait. You will see. Allah is cherishing you...

How does Baba know that bringing us to the waterfall is the best possible medicine? Even Mehmed was smiling sometimes by the time we got into the car to come back. In the afternoon Baba took us back to the cemetery. We lay down together on the grass near Mama’s grave and Baba asked Allah to reach into our hearts and heal the wound that her dying is for us.

A Mercy to the Worlds - the Coming of Muhammad, may Allah bless him and give him peace $10 US

Through light-hearted and gentle storytelling that inspires love and longing for Allah and His Messenger, Ms. Sinclair introduces children to Muhammad, may Allah bless him and give him peace. She verifies for them, in a way appropriate to their needs, that Islam is the culmination of the Message of Allah, a message that opened with Adam, peace upon him, and was sealed with Muhammad, may Allah bless him and give him peace, renewed through time and purified from human alteration by the prophets in between, peace upon them one and all.

Sheikh Nuh al-Qudat, former Mufti of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

My daughter can now act out entire scenes from A Mercy to the Worlds. She loves it so much, it’s the only CD we’re allowed to play in our car! I even feel her English has improved because she now uses words like ‘surely’ and ‘alas.’

My 6-year-old granddaughter Halima spent several weeks listening daily to The Bowing of the Stars. Then she put it aside. Two days ago she was revisiting it for the first time in a couple of months. When she came to the scene with Yusuf, peace upon him, in the bottom of the well, she ran into my kitchen. Grandma! I just remembered something! I fell down in the garden, like this. She threw herself on the floor. And when I was laying there on the stones I remembered Prophet Yusuf in the bottom of the well, how he was making dua, and I made dua! Halima bint Ibrahim

YES!!!!! We LOVE LOVE LOVE her stories – ‘when I grow up’ I want to tell stories like her too. In fact, she has inspired me to try a little more with my own storytelling to children, but her CD’s never fail to give even me goosebumps as the story unfolds and carries you to a time and place as if you were to almost witness it. I could rave a long time masha’Allah. We have the Bowing of the Stars and the Year of the Elephant. The Qur’an recital is superb masha’Allah too. I forget who recites, but it’s beautiful.From Mothering Magazine Forums

My four-year old son Dawoud and I were spellbound by this telling, dazzled by the grandeur of the story. For the first time I felt the beautiful reality of the Prophet Yusuf, the magnificence of his personality. The next day, Dawoud retold all of the part we had heard to his father. He still wants to listen again and again and his understanding grows each time. Heba Salem, Jordan

I’ve been playing Miraculous Happenings for a few days straight and noticed that my daughter has actually memorized parts of the story, and she is only 18 months old!! I was doubtful at first so I’ve kept playing it every day so I could pay attention. I can tell she has memorized parts of the story because her actions usually precede the sound effects/dialogue that she seems to be imitating rather than afterwards. Muna, Kuwait

I saw something last night that made me realize again why I am trying to set up Nur al Qasas as a resource…may Allah guide me and show me how to work for His sake alone, in ways that are pleasing to Him.

Look at what’s possible with materials from Nur al Qasas:
There was a gathering of three families, and there were 7 children there, ranging in age from 3 to 13. The youngest four were girls, the oldest three were boys. Since the oldest girl, 7, was sister to the boys, they were all together. They had been harmoniously busy together for an hour or so; I walked into the room where they were, and found them (more…)

The circle turns and the glorious days of Hajj return again, alhamdulillah, full of blessings for those fortunate enough to go on Hajj, and full of blessings for the rest of us staying at home too….these days magnify our good works, demonstrating yet again the magnanimity of Allah Mighty and Majestic.

A mother on a homeschooling list I belong to asked if anyone had a skit dealing with the story of Hajar, may Allah be pleased with her, and Zam Zam. That put me in mind of the very happy memories I have from being in the classroom these past years and doing activities with children to develop a love and yearning in them for the truths of their tradition.

A skit has its difficulties sometimes…it seems that children are not to be allowed to play the parts of the Prophets, or the Companions, which is always a little hard, because playing roles is how young children learn best. I pray that someday I might have the opportunity to talk in depth with a fiqh master about these subjects. Perhaps, since there is a big difference between a classroom or household of small children trying to grow and learn and a “theater company” of adults portraying roles for show rather than for play, there could be a different ruling…only a gingerly asking, since I am not a scholar of fiqh.

For the meantime there are always several ways to skin a cat, as the saying goes. One of those ways is replacing a skit with a group storytelling. (more…)

Click on “For Kids” (though we know it’s not justfor kids!) for a full listing of what’s available now: the three CD’s–the brand-new not-yet-even-pressed-yet Mercy to the Worlds, Miraculous Happenings in the Year of the Elephant, and The Bowing of the Stars, along with three shorts—From Torture to Triumph, Two Prophets in the Endless Sea of Allah’s Knowledge, and Walnut Remedy.

Visit today! Hear the samples! Order the downloads!

To order the books: A Trust of Treasures and Miraculous Happenings in the Year of the Elephant and CD’s Miraculous Happenings in the Year of the Elephant, The Bowing of the Stars, and A Mercy to the Worlds,

Available now from the Islamic Foundation Markfield website, and soon from bookstores in the US and the UK, and before long, inshaAllah from my new site, Stories of Light.com

OTHER NEWS

The Grand Mufti of Jordan Sheikh Nuh Ali Salman has heard parts of A Mercy to the Worlds-the Coming of Muhammad, May Allah bless him and give him peace, that were translated into Arabic for him. He said, “This is beautiful. It will surely inspire love for Allah and His Messenger. The Arabs need it too…please make an Arabic version.” A preliminary translation was then made of the whole piece, and another mufti in his office both listened to the English recording and read the Arabic script and declared that it was sound, alhamdulillah.

We requested that the Grand Mufti make an official endorsement which can go on the CD cover. This will mean a lot, since one of the most remarkable qualities of Islam is authenticity. Every aspect of Islam has been painstakingly preserved and recorded, so instead of making up the traditions, as is necessary for the other religions since so much has been lost, there is meticulous scholarship and remarkable preservation of information. We received his page-long statement yesterday, and are very grateful for his generous assistance and support. This means that (more…)